Eddie Melin was sitting in an easy chair at the front of First Presbyterian Church’s packed social hall for more than an hour last week. He had heard eight friends tell stories, tapped his foot to seven songs that played a key part in his musical life, smiled as young children from Opportunity School serenaded him with “Happy Birthday.”

He was about to bust. “Can I say something?” Melin said as he stood up. “Man, what a celebration. If I would have known how much fun I’d have turning 100, I would have done it a lot sooner.”

Melin, whose passion for music and people have turned him into an instrumental and historical icon in Amarillo for more than 70 years, reaches his 100th birthday on Friday. The Amarillo Symphony, which has been a key part of his life, will host a free concert in his honor Friday.

“Music is a part of me,” Melin said. “If I’ve got a problem, I listen to music and it always goes away. I’ve always had a great love for it.”

Melin and music began to blend when he began to learn piano at age 5, and later violin in his hometown of Alma, Mo. But he felt his first calling in 1924 at age 12 when his mother, Edna, called he and his brother to come inside and listen to “Rhapsody in Blue” on the radio.

“Sitting in front of the radio listening to that, that’s when I made up my mind to go into music,” he said. “That triggered a real professional thing in me.”

Melin would add saxophone and clarinet to his playing piano and violin. He was a dance band member and dance band leader. He was a music teacher. He earned a masters degree from Columbia University in New York.

That was all before he got to Amarillo in 1940. Making Amarillo his home was a coincidental leap of faith. A female patient of Melin’s father, who was an Alma dentist, told him of a an elementary school music teaching opening in Amarillo. Melin was soon on a train to Texas.

He taught at Margaret Wills Elementary and began playing violin for the Amarillo Symphony. He met his wife, Olive, at a bridge party, and they were married in 1941. World War II, however, intervened. Melin was an officer in the Army Medical Corps in France.

After the war, he returned to Amarillo. He partnered with his brother-in-law, Sonny Cooper, to open the popular Cooper and Melin music store in 1946. For the next 23 years, it was a place to listen to records as well as buy them, record players, stereos, books and televisions.

“When I was growing up, I didn’t know homes didn’t have music in them,” said daughter Vicki Schoen.

Melin also returned to the symphony, which was on the verge of folding because of burdening debt.

“The best way to describe his relationship with the Amarillo Symphony is guiding father,” said Susan White, the symphony’s executive director. “The symphony would not exist today if not for Eddie Melin.”

At a board meeting in 1950 were conductor Clyde Roller, whom Melin helped bring to Amarillo, and Melin. They appealed to symphony chairman Lee Bivins to let them try to save the symphony.

“We thought it could be saved with the right format,” Melin said. “They let Roller and me co-chair a committee to save the symphony. Our own separate ideas were almost identical, and fortunately we got it done.”

Dale Roller, brother of Clyde and longtime friend of Melin, said an upbeat quality has always guided Melin, none more evident than helping save the symphony.

“Both stood up and said to just give us another chance,” Roller said.

Melin would become the symphony’s business manager, credited with implementing sound financial procedures and facilitating community outreach programs that focused on fundraising and education. Cooper and Melin became the symphony headquarters. The store’s old telephone number is still in use by the symphony.

Melin, starting in 1970, became director of health planning for Texas Panhandle Health Systems Agency. He retired on his 70th birthday in 1982, but not from life. The book he wrote in 2009, “Stories From An Old Man,” proves that.

Melin was a tennis fanatic, playing three times a week until he was 94. He has been a Rotarian for more than 60 years. But the arts, especially music, have always held a special place.

He was named to the original Texas Commission on the Arts in the 1960s, and helped select the site for the Pioneer Amphitheatre in Palo Duro Canyon. He served on the arts committee of the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce.

“A community without the arts isn’t much of a place to live,” Melin said. “The arts make life better for everyone, whether they know it or not.”

Melin, the 2010 Amarillo Globe-News Man of the Year, conducted the symphony’s playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Globe-News’ 2011 Fourth of July laser show.

He is an honorary member of the symphony’s board of directors, and when he retired as business manager in 1969, he was awarded a lifetime pass to symphony concerts.

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I bought my very first record from Mr. Melin December 20, 1963 at the Cooper & Melin shop downtown. That was almost half his life ago! I certainly wish I had a photo of that store.
-Happy Birthday Mr. M.